Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan’s search for the truth during the early days of the pandemic was seen as a threat by the authorities
A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese government’s response to what became the start of a global pandemic. She shared her reports on X (then known as Twitter), YouTube and WeChat. She was one of the few independent Chinese reporters on the ground as Wuhan and the rest of China went into lockdown.
In one video, recorded in February 2020, Zhang said: “I can’t find anything to say except that the city is paralysed because everything is under cover. That’s what this country is facing now … They imprison us in the name of pandemic prevention and restrict our freedom. We must not talk to strangers, it’s dangerous. So without the truth, everything is meaningless. If we cannot get to the truth, if we cannot break the monopoly of the truth, the world means nothing to us.”
In another video, she showed a hospital that was overflowing with patients on trolleys in the hallway.
I just clicked through to a guardian link that talked about why she was initially convicted. It’s harder to pin down exactly what misinformation she was accused of spreading though since most western outlets are causally dismissive of the claims.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/citizen-journalist-facing-jail-in-china-for-wuhan-covid-reporting-zhang-zhan
That said, this guardian article references interviews she did with VoA, an American government outlet, and The Epoch Times, a far right wing outlet run by the Falun Gong cult. The Epoch Times I know in particular has promoted antivax or anti lockdown conspiracies in the US, as well as other stuff like with Qanon and the idea that Trump actually won in 2020. It wouldn’t surprise me to know she was promoting similar anti lockdown conspiracies but just in China.
It is interesting you didn’t give any western media the benefit of the doubt, while giving CCP plenty.
After a quick google search, it seems like there are several court documents for Zhang’s case circling the internet:
There are two different versions, one judgement, one indictment (copy). Their contents seems to match, and they also match the reports of various media articles.
The indictment mentioned neither “the lie” nor “the truth”, which, in my mind, is probably why most media never reported it.
The document only mentioned:
I was not able to find any court document from official source from China/CCP. Since all these articles are either photos or transcribed from photo, I don’t imagine the original documents are easy to find. It seems like the original document can be obtained from: https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/ (according to the title of the website, and Chinese government owned domain name), but they require personally identifiable information (like phone number, which is connected to ID in China) after I typed in 张展 (Zhang Zhan).
But since you clearly know more about China and CCP than I do, so you might want to give it a try.
To me it seems like she just talked negatively about the government and their policies on the global stage. Maybe could be considered misinformation because it appeals to westerners or something? To me it doesn’t seem like that though.